Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Congress weighs the fate of Utah’s wild lands. To comment on the Utah Wilderness bills, write or phone your congressional representative, senators and President Clinton. Mail to Senate offices can be addressed to: U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510. You can reach your representative […]
Ray Wheeler
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
A monumental clash of values over Utah
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Congress weighs the fate of Utah’s wild lands. Utah’s proposed BLM wilderness areas feature heart-stopping scenery: big rivers booming in sheer-walled canyons thousands of feet deep; labyrinthine canyon systems etched into colorful sedimentary rock formations; forested plateaus ringed by 1,000-foot high cliff walls; […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Utah hearings misfire
Unidentified speaker: What I would like to do is have a political (poll) … and just let everybody express what they can’t express because of time limits; so until that red light goes off, (inaudible) make noise and … The crowd, chanting: 5.7, 5.7, 5.7, 5.7, 5.7, – Official transcript, Salt Lake City Wilderness Hearing, […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
A 4 million acre difference
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Utah hearings misfire. 1. The Book Cliffs: BLM and adjoining state and Indian reservation lands comprise a natural area of over 1 million acres spanning the Tavaputs Plateau and mile-deep Desolation and Gray canyons. It is one of the largest blocks of unprotected […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Congress weighs the fate of Utah’s wild lands
(Note: this article accompanies another feature story in this issue, Utah hearings misfire.) When Utah’s congressional delegation announced almost a year ago that it would introduce a bill designating BLM wilderness, environmentalists in the state were shocked. They knew they faced a potentially disastrous alignment of political planets: Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, […]
Posted inOctober 24, 1988: The future
Whither the Colorado Plateau?
Until the early 1980s, southern Utah was a battleground between extraction and preservation. Now, Ray Wheeler writes in the conclusion of his four-part series, the struggle is between industrial tourism, typified by Lake Powell and its several million annual visitors, and the more modest home-grown tourism centered on the region’s beauty and its small communities. (To […]
Posted inOctober 10, 1988: Environmentalism triumphant
The trauma of shifting economies, and ideologies
Ray Wheeler wanders across southeastern Utah, attempting to discover why the area is so bound to extraction, even against its own economic interest, and whether change is possible. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.19/download-entire-issue
Posted inOctober 28, 1985: The fully operational MX missile
Last Stand for the Colorado Plateau, Part 2
An effort to create wilderness in the La Sal Mountains near Moab, Utah, highlights infighting between the state’s conservation groups. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/17.20/download-entire-issue
Posted inOctober 14, 1985: Last stand for the Colorado Plateau
Last stand for the Colorado Plateau, Part 1
Half of Utah — and the vast majority of its BLM wilderness candidates — lies in the hotly contested and spectacular Colorado Plateau. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/17.19/download-entire-issue